REVIEW: John, Lyttleton Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

John
Lyttleton Theatre
5 November 2014
5 Stars

Some theatrical experiences can shatter you, the truth they evidence is so profound. Some can make you laugh at the absurdities of life. Some can confuse or cause wonder in you by shining a light into your own life or the lives of people you know. Some can blaze with an intensity that does not leave you long after you are home from the theatre. Some can play with theatrical form and conventions, but in a way which creates a new form, a new convention. Some can build on past achievements to create a new, incredible experience. Some can look like they are a particular experience and then morph into something else, unexpectedly, perhaps with comic results, perhaps with a profundity that is both alarming and life-affirming. Some theatrical experiences can do all these things, and more. Let's call this sort of production Category A.

Some theatrical productions are just goddamned awful. Let's call this Category Z.

Now playing at the Lyttleton Theatre, is the premiere of John, a work conceived and directed by Lloyd Newson for DV8 Physical Theatre. John is very definitely a Category A production.

In the programme notes for John, Lloyd Newson says:

"I realised then that I needed to do a work about love and life, not death...Then John walked into our office. After his interview it became clear the work would predominately follow one man's story; his story. It is a personal perspective, not a collage of opinions."

DV8 Physical Theatre is an extraordinary company that produces work of astonishing quality and which, often, ventures into arenas in ways in which other companies, other work does not. Verbatim theatre told through dance and physical expression; Real stories, real words, real experiences shared and conveyed through the heightened language of physical expression.

Newson creates a style of physical movement which can convey all sorts of different emotions and viewpoints, depending on the point he wants to make. Here, in John, he creates a work about the extremities of one man's extraordinary life and tells that tale through solo work, duo work, ensemble work, set pieces and dialogue; all of which has a cohesion, a character, a form which makes a compelling whole.

John comes from a difficult background. His father beat his mother and raped his sister and babysitter. His mother turned to alcohol and died alone and undiscovered. His brothers died or were taken from him. He had many relationships with women, fathered children, lived on benefits, took drugs and ended up in prison, more than once. As the programme notes, "On excursions from his probation hostel he discovered a group of men, inhabiting a world unknown to most, where like him, they gather, all searching for something : be it love, escape, validation, sex or company."

Newson tells this story implacably, objectively and with a real sense of theatrical style. It is an extraordinary achievement, nothing quite like anything you have seen before, including earlier DV8 productions. It's visceral, astonishing, enlightening and surprising all at once.

Throughout the piece, Newson uses a physical language which involves myriad variations on coupling. Bodies entwine, enmesh, envelope - there is a sense of duality often present in the movement. This can serve to create relationships of the family kind or the sexual kind or even just those of passers by in the same world. But the fluidity, the unique capacity to convey emotion and narrative, and sense of human connection achieved through the (very difficult and intricate) full body ebbs and flows is astonishing.

Different styles of narrative fuse effortlessly to create cohesion as the central and titular character tells his life story. His early life is dealt with in monologue, reflecting on the horrors of his childhood (compact tableaux starkly demonstrate key moments in an ever-revolving set) his many affairs with women (the emptiness of which is conveyed beautifully by a series of hangers and dresses), his encounters with death and his descent into drugs. Occasionally, others speak, but that is because that is the way John remembers his life.

Then, after prison, rather than hearing from John, the mode shifts; now, we see and hear the maelstrom in which he finds himself as he enters the secret club that is the world of gay saunas. John goes there for comfort, assurance, sex certainly, but sometimes just to be. Cleverly, two other characters, a couple who run a particular sauna, explain the secret sauna world, and the audience comes to experience the sense of other-worldliness that John would have felt as he entered this world and grew accustomed to it.

Then other characters speak, workers or patrons, all adding to the texture of John's new environment, the place where he seeks solace. A particular patron, a teacher, goes into detail about his promiscuous condom-free penetrative sex lifestyle, its joys and consequences; and through him John shows the road he has not taken.

An unseen person asks John questions about his journey, his feelings. It might be a narrator; it might be a God; it struck me as John's parole officer making inquiries about his progress. Another non-conforming way to progress John's story.

It's confronting from start to finish; challenging and disturbing in many ways. But, ultimately, as we hear John settle into a calm, perhaps contented sleep, we see that despite the horrors and setbacks and challenges of his life, John refuses to quit. He embraces the possibilities life offers and he will survive. Love and life, not death.

As John, Hannes Langolf is really quite remarkable. He handles the acting part of his performance flawlessly, creating a very real, unflinching, and intensely raw articulation of a life led in pain and confusion. He complements this with an extraordinary and dextrous physical performance that is both delicate and muscular. It’s a very powerful turn that will leave an indelible mark on anyone who sees it.

Taylor Benjamin and Ian Garside are wonderful as the proprietors of the Gay Sauna; the discussion of cleaning up post-sex faecal matter is as hilarious as it is shocking. Garth Johnson gives a lovely cameo as a carefree gay receptionist; and whoever played the bareback-sex addicted teacher (I could not tell from the programme) was quite brilliant. Indeed, the entire cast give brave, complex and fascinating performances.

There is a particularly clever sequence where Newson has the male cast constantly disrobe to nakedness, put on a towel, remove it, re-dress and move to a new place then repeat the process. This has the effect of demonstrating, in a short hand way, the overwhelming and confronting scenes faced by strangers to the gay sauna world.

Anna Fleischle’s wonderful simple set, all wooden walls and cupboards and doors, resembles a doll’s house, a home, a prison and a sauna at different times. Every ounce of space is used effectively and the use of the revolve genuinely adds to the sense of the set’s purpose and the complexity of the narrative. It is lit perfectly by Richard Godin, whose use of light and darkness is perfectly nuanced to ensure that illumination is a real character in this work.

Newson has spent a lifetime creating evocative and provocative theatre. John is a significant and unforgettable contribution to a unique and important theatrical oeuvre. It will haunt and confront you.

Do not miss it.